OT notes Ruth 1

1) For me, one of the best treatments of Ruth is still in Trible's God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality. 2) I wonder why it did not get the name Naomi, instead of Ruth. 3) In terms of suffering is not Naomi a female Job,she loses everything due to a famine, lives in a foreign land, loses her two sons, is widowed?Famine is ironic when one lives in Bethlehem, house of bread. 4) That we are in a tale is indicated by the names of her sons:pestilence and tuberculosis.How could they end up healthy with the notion of living out one's name? We make such a fuss over the enacted prophecy name given for Hosea and Gomer's offspring, but these are definitely in the team picture. 5) the story could be a good entry point into speaking on social safety nets. 6) Both Orpah and Ruth do a good thing, even if they are opposite. Orpah could mean neck, or shadow/gloom, or gazelle. Ruth is generally thought to be friend/companion or taken differently a vision of beauty, perhaps pasture 7) Naomi, joy, pleasantness,beauty, delight- gives as good a sense of the years that go by us from youth, not to be recaptured as any short speech anywhere.That strikes me as a rarely used motif for this passage. 8) The great covenant between the two women is a piece of itself. Note that the words come from a foreigner and Moab usually has a poor connotation, save that it could be the burial site of Moses.In its way is this story not a direct assault on the program of purging inter-marriage out of the fear of mixing that was said to be initiated in the post-exilic community by Ezra? 9) Notice how often the word, sub, return, go back appears in this chapter and what can we say with Thomas Wolfe that you can't go home again, or can we? 10) Naomi faces the theodicy issue. She calls herself mara-bitter tears/bitterness/ She says that El Shaddai (God of the mountains but some think it has a connection to breasts, a nurturing god) who has done it. She lays the events right at the divine doorstep.